


Climb

by fullyajar



Category: Fear the Walking Dead (TV), The 100 (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Elyza is a badass, F/F, Gen, One Shot, Zombie Apocalypse, and she proves it about five times over in 6K words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 11:13:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6236419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fullyajar/pseuds/fullyajar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's been up shit creek without a paddle before, but Elyza knows there’s no way around this one: handcuffed to a street lamp with a herd of zombies on the horizon is a seriously bad place to be in a zombie apocalypse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Climb

**Author's Note:**

> Rated T for language, violence, and blood. 
> 
> Inspired by [a tumblr post](http://thedorkone.tumblr.com/post/140903976418/i-dont-know-much-about-this-elyza-lex-lady-but) that said something about Elyza Lex getting cuffed to a pole and picking the lock with her bra wire, to which my immediate reaction was "No way, she’d climb the damn pole." So, here ya go. Elyza is fucking badass.

 

Okay.

In retrospect, hunting down the gang that stole her bike – not the best idea she’s ever had.

She grunts in pain as one of the thugs’ fists connects with her mouth. She’s knocked sideways, only staying on her knees because of her wrists handcuffed around the street lamp. She tastes copper, and her blood boils.

Fucking assholes.

“Not so tough now, are you?” the man says, putting his hands on his knees and leaning down over her. She tosses her head up, gives him a bloodstained smile, and spits in his face. His face is sprayed with red spittle, and he pulls back in disgust. The back of his hand whacks across her cheek, and she sees stars, but her bloody smile doesn’t fade.

“Derek, enough,” a voice says sternly.

Derek – Dickhead – stands up straight and turns around. “Are you fucking serious?”

Elyza breathes hard, pushing back the pain and licking the inside of her split lip to soothe it. She struggles against the metal around her wrists, but the cuffs are tight. Just her luck. Does everyone carry around handcuffs in this godforsaken mess of a country?

“Yes, I’m serious,” the other man says. Elyza looks up. As she expected: another tattered Hells Angel wannabe with blood on his shoes and way too many guns on his belt. One perk of trying to survive in the States; plenty of weaponry to be found. Her own belt feels forlorn and empty without her own arsenal. As Hells Angel number two - she'll call him Drongo, yeah, that fits - walks closer, her double-barrel shotgun slung over his back clacks against his holstered pistol.

“The bitch stabbed Enrico and pulled a gun on me!” Dickhead shouts. Enrico shoots her a dirty look and clutches his leg from his perch on the hood of an abandoned car down the road.

“Self-fucking-defense,” Elyza spits, wiping the corner of her mouth on her leather jacket. Her ribs ache from the bat he took to her not half an hour ago – hell yeah she pulled a gun on him; one blow was quite enough, thanks very much. “Give me back my bike and we’ll call it even.”

“How about I beat the shit out of you instead and we’ll see from there?” Dickhead snaps, stepping closer.

“Yeah, that doesn’t work for me,” she returns coolly. Dickhead’s face contorts with rage and his hands ball into fists, but Drongo puts up a hand and he stops his advance.

The boss drops to his haunches and studies her thoughtfully. She takes in the blood on his hands and wonders how badly Enrico the pincushion is hurting – she hopes quite badly. Shouldn’t have pulled a gun on  _her._

“What’s your name, sweetheart?” Drongo asks.

She laughs humorlessly. “What a coincidence; you just guessed it.”

The man smiles; his teeth shine in the overhang of his overgrown beard. “An Aussie, huh? Far from home.”

She snorts. “It’s the apocalypse, isn’t it? No one’s got a home anymore.”

“I suppose not.” He reaches forward and drags his fingers through a few locks of her hair; she pulls back sharply and cringes at the sting in her wrists as she reaches the end of her arm’s length. “Listen,  _Sweetheart_ ,” he croons, smile widening. “This is how it’s going to go. Either you be kind to us – stow that potty mouth, talk real sweet, and show us you can be a real _team_  player – ”

Dickhead sniggers and Elyza shoots him a venomous look.

“ – and in return we take you with us – protect you, feed you, even give you back your bike, if you want…” he adds pointedly, taking the motorcycle keys from a pocket with a smile.

Her eyes narrow. Her beloved Kawasaki. Goddamn them.

The smile drops from the man’s face as she glares at him, and his hand tightens around the keys as his other reaches for her again. She gets the urge to bite his grimy fingers – worth the risk at tetanus or not?

“Or we take what we want from you and – ”

A scream suddenly tears through the deserted street. Drongo stands sharply, and Elyza sighs with relief; holding her breath from his stench was getting really hard. She looks up and cringes: Enrico screams and struggles as a walker sinks its teeth into his neck, and blood sprays across the pavement to join the puddle that had collected from the stab wound she’d given him.

“Damn it!” Dickhead shouts as he draws his pistol and takes aim down the road. Two gunshots ring in the silence, and the walker thuds to the pavement. Enrico jerks and whimpers on the ground, but Elyza can see he’s as good as dead already.

Drongo slaps Dickhead’s aimed gun down and grabs him roughly. “You fucking idiot, he was already dead! That’ll bring more of them!”

Dickhead’s eyes go wide, but it’s not at the words; his eyes are trained on something over his friend’s shoulder. Elyza follows his gaze as Drongo does the same, and her blood runs cold.

A giant herd of walkers rounds the building and starts down the road.

“Oh, fuck,” she murmurs, scrambling to her feet.

Dickhead raises his gun again, aiming from one rotting corpse to the next as more and more fill the recently empty street. “What do we do, boss?”

Drongo growls with irritation and shoves him. “What do you think, idiot? Run!”

“But the bikes are that way!”

“Don’t matter,” Drongo says as he picks up his pack. “We’ll circle around.”

“Hey fuckers! What about me!?” Elyza yells as they start to run, rattling the handcuffs hard against the pole.

“Keep that up!” Dickhead says, nodding at the clanking sound the cuffs make with a vicious smirk. “It’ll be clear in no time.”

She stops instantly, eyes wide. Drongo barks a laugh, and they turn the corner out of sight.

Fuck.

She turns to the horde of walkers approaching.

Oh, she is  _so_  screwed.

She steels her jaw. Luckily, screwed has become a relative term when she’s been stuck out in woop woop in a country she doesn’t know surrounded by people she doesn’t know – people who kept  _dying_ , coincidentally – while the fucking end of the world happened.

This is not going to be how she dies. Not if she has any say in it.

She grits her teeth, twists her wrists, and pulls. The cuffs dig into her skin and she cringes with every second she pulls harder.

Down the road, a walker spots her and adjusts its course. She can hear its rotting teeth grind in anticipation, and she redoubles her efforts. She tucks in her thumb as best she can, but the cuffs catch on the base of it anyway. Her skin slices against the edge of the metal, and she can’t push back the groan of pain; two more walkers turn to the sound, and she drops her hands.

Okay, so she’s not getting loose.

Her eyes flit skittishly from one sagging face to the next. God, she’s never seen so many walkers in one place. A hundred pairs of feet shuffle closer and a hundred pairs of soulless eyes turn to her and swivel in sunken eye sockets and under gaunt brows. Since when do the damn things move in  _herds_?

She looks desperately around her. If running isn’t an option, a fight it is. She’s not half bad at fighting. Practice makes perfect, after all. But without a weapon – she doesn’t like her chances. Dickhead and Drongo took her knife, her guns – her bike.

No, she tells herself quickly. Don’t think about the bike.

She nearly laughs at herself – priorities, Elyza. Life over motorcycle. Keep the hell up.

Extra knife in her boot,  _right._

She drops to the ground and twists her leg around the pole to reach it. Her eyes never leave the closest walker – only ten feet away, at most. Her hands close around the handle, and she jumps to her feet.

It’s not much. She knows that. The bloody thing fit in her boot for a reason – if she’s lucky and quick, it’ll stab deep enough through an eye or an ear to be an instant kill. But luck’s been a fickle mistress the last few days.

There’s a sound down the road – something that catches her attention amid all the deathly grunts and moans: something  _human._

Her eyes go wide. Oh wow.

“Help me…” Enrico begs, reaching to her with a bloody hand as he drags himself across the pavement wet with his blood.

How is he still  _alive?_

Also, how the hell does he think  _she’ll_  be able to help him? She’s got her hands full, thanks very much. She pulls her wrists wide in the handcuffs and shoots him a look:  _are you kidding me?_

“Please!” he cries, much louder, and she shakes her head as three walkers turn to the sound. Why did only the idiots survive the first wave of the apocalypse? She looks away as the walkers descend on him, but she can’t block out the sickening, wet sound of teeth tearing tendons, or Enrico’s last screams.

The closest walker gargles with something like excitement, and her eyes snap back to it. She tightens her hand on the knife and twists around. If she keeps the pole between her body and the walkers, she’ll minimize herself as a target, but she’ll also have a lot more trouble stabbing deep. She leans in, pressing her body against the pole. It’s cold, but comforting – the semblance of a shield. She could use it right now, and she will.

The walker approaches. Three more follow close behind, but she keeps her eye on the first threat. One at a time. Only way to do it. Thinking about the two dozen that’ll follow does  _not_ help.

The walker’s putrescent, torn lips pull tight over teeth bloody from feeding. She doesn’t know how this infection works; she’s happy not knowing, honestly. Bites mean turning, that’s all she needs to know. If she turns, she’ll most likely be the first zombie stuck handcuffed to a pole, pulling her arms to pieces trying to escape to sate her rabid hunger. It’ll be original, for sure, but it’s not something she aspires to.

The zombie is almost in range, and she prepares to strike. One of its eyes is a deep ulcer festering with she doesn’t want to know what – it’s a good enough target, and she changes her hold on the knife to an overhand grip.

The walker groans eagerly and reaches for her. Its hands grabble across her outstretched arms; she cringes with disgust but holds her ground. Her free hand closes around its throat while her other pulls back as far as she can, and she stabs deep into its eye. The zombie sags to the ground, dead as a maggot. For real this time.

The next one follows without a moment’s consideration of its dead fellow. It stumbles over the corpse, and Elyza dodges as it falls against the pole. She brings up her knee to knock it down, drops to the ground, and stabs the knife into its ear in one fluid movement.

The next one ambles closer, and she repeats the dance.

Her lack of freedom is frustrating and frankly a little terrifying. She’s used to at least having the  _option_  of getting the hell out of dodge, and she’s not a fan of being confined. But at the same time, the pole also keeps her centered. It limits the space she needs to protect, and it keeps her focused on each successive threat.

One at a time.

She stabs a zombie hard through the chin – it keeps snapping, and she twists the knife to shut it up.

One at a time.

Her hand shoots out against the next one’s throat as it lunges forward with more malice than the last; its teeth chew on air dangerously close to her wrist, but she brings her knife up and slides it under its ear.

One at a time.

Another body thuds to the ground at her feet, and she nearly stumbles over the pile of corpses. There’s blood on her arms (not her own) that’s drying into cracked crusts, sweat on her brow that’s dripping into her eyes and no doubt ruining her mascara, and adrenaline in her veins that’s turning her mouth dry and narrowing the world around her to nothing but the next zombie, but she’s still alive.

She’ll make it, right?

She sinks the knife into a sunken eye and pulls it out, ready for the next. Her eyes rise up, taking in the scene – and her stomach drops.

Bloody hell.

No, she won’t.

Enrico’s corpse distracted at least half of them, but as she watches, four more walker get to their feet by the stain of his remains and turn to fresher meat – to  _her_. She can take four, but Jesus Christ, she can’t see the end of the herd that’s still heading her way. She’s taken out at least a dozen, but it’s nothing to what’s coming.

She pulls desperately at the handcuffs again, bringing up her knee against the pole to add leverage. “Come  _on!”_  she screams as tears of pain spring to her eyes. The knife slips in her hand as her palms turn wet with her own blood, and she cries out and relents.

She shakes her head to clear her vision as her ears pick up the sound of dead groans and snapping teeth, and she barely dodges out of the way in time as a walker grabs hold of her.

“Shit!” she hisses, throwing her weight against it. Its teeth graze across her shoulder, but don’t break skin, and she kicks out hard against it so it tumbles backwards into three other walkers.

She feels more hands on her, and her heartbeat spikes – she can barely see the sky anymore through the shadow of walkers closing in.

She spins sharply around, shouldering the walker out of the way as she dodges the one that went for her neck. The thing falls to the ground with a thud, and she brings down her heel on its face as hard as she can. Bones crack under her boot, and the walker falls still, but she’s already moving on. She spins again, pulling hard at the handcuffs with the force of her centrifugal momentum, and knocks more of them down, but twice as many replace the ones she forces back. She lunges forward, nearly knocking her head against the pole, and impales an advancing face with the knife. She feels another at her back, and she kicks it back while she reaches for the next one ahead of her.

God, they’re circling around. She’s knocking them back, but her circle is contracting. She looks desperately over her shoulder and sees as many zombies behind her as ahead.

She feels more hands scratching at her, and she screams with desperate rage.

“Fuck off!” Her knife descends into another eye, but she knows all her yelling does it goad her undead enemies on.

Her stomach sinks. She can’t fight them all off. She also knows she has no choice, unless she amputates a hand. Even if she  _wanted_ to – there’s no way she’ll be able to before the next one rips her throat out.

She smashes her shoulder against another zombie. Teeth glance off her arms. Fingers scratch at her back. Another comes out of nowhere, and she ducks under outstretched arms and stumbles into the pile of corpses at her feet. Her momentum pulls the handcuffs hard against her bloody wrist, and she drops the knife.

“No!” she groans, scrambling for it on her knees. She sees the edge as it catches a stray ray of sunlight, but then a zombie shuffles closer and kicks it far out of reach.

Oh fucking hell.

Is this how she dies?

She looks up as the zombies knock helplessly against the pole, momentarily confused at her absence. The sky barely peeks out between them, but her eyes roam over it when everywhere else she looks shows her rotting feet and haggard death that only brings bitter bile and rage to her throat.

What a fucking way to go, she thinks, closing her eyes and sagging against the bodies beneath her. Let’s hope there’s something better up there.

Up there.

Her eyes shoot open, and the sky suddenly screams with a chance.

Up.

A walker drops to its knees, scrambling for her arm, and she elbows it away as more follow. She surges to her feet, kicking as she goes. She spins hard around the pole, frees a circle around her, looks up, and starts to climb.

Her hands slip with blood as the grips the pole, but her legs are strong. She clamps the pole between them and shuffles upwards, using muscles she didn’t even know she had to pull her weight up.

A hand closes around her ankle. She kicks out on instinct, but cries in alarm when she nearly drops to ground. Her hands slide across the blood and she drops three feet down. Three pairs of hands and three rapidly biting mouths close in.

She screams and kicks down onto one of them. It gives her a boost – a small one, but she takes it, reaching up and holding on with all the strength she can muster. She kicks down on the next, and the next, and the next, boosting herself up as the corpses pile up beneath her combat boots. She gains another few inches, and reaches up with every kick. What a way to climb, she thinks, heart rising with unexpected hope. Her boot hits down onto the next face, crushing bone and splitting skulls, and she jumps up from the force of it. A dozen zombie hands grasp and strain for her, but she looks up and starts to climb in earnest, leaving them all behind.

Her arms shake. Her wrists are still bleeding profusely, but she pushes away the pain. Her ribs ache from the beating she took, and every movement forces her to subdue a groan of pain, but she’s moving. She fought off fifty walkers, and she’s still not infected. She’s still alive. That’s all she needs to know.

She hears the groaning of the dead below her, reaching up forlornly as she shimmies out of range. She tightens her grip, holds, brings up her legs, slides up her hands, and repeats. One step at a time.

The street lamp is a tall one; one of the high-mast lighting types she’d only find at the sides of interstates in Perth, but that the Americans – with their propensity for making everything bigger than it bloody needs to be – seem to place all along their city roads. It’s damn far (bloody Seppos), but she sighs with relief and momentarily relaxes her hold. She’ll survive this. For real, this time.

The sun shines across the scene. By the time she gets to the top, it’s dropped a few inches toward the horizon, setting the scene in midtones and reds. The top of the pole arches across the street at a hard right angle. She clambers around it, feeling ridiculously like a monkey as she dangles at the horizontal part, but she slips her handcuffed hands over the end of the lamp, and she’s as good as free. She pulls herself up onto the perch, sits up, and sighs in relief.

She made it.

She looks down. The dead still cluster around the lamp ninety feet below, reaching up with desperate hands. Her blood is smeared across the pole, drawing them in, but there’s no way they’ll get her up here. For now, she’s safe. She looks down on them, takes in the horizon and the setting sun around her, and feels like a god – a feeling accompanied by the first smile in hours.

 

* * *

 

The morning comes full of piercing sunlight and grumpy yawning.

Sleeping was… a challenge. Before she lost the light, she picked the lock of her handcuffs with a wire of her bra that had been shanking her for the past two weeks. She’s actually quite proud of that one. Any  _dude_  in her situation would’ve been stuck handcuffed at the top of a ninety-foot pole with a crowd of zombies below. As it is, her hands are free. There’s still the case of the ninety-foot pole and the zombies, but you can’t win ‘em all. Use what you got. She learned that early on, even before shit hit the fan worldwide. And it’s kept her alive.

The perpendicular mast of the lamp is long enough to stretch out on, but not nearly wide enough to rest on. She ended up tying her belt around her waist and the lamp as security. Still, she was more than a little apprehensive of falling to her death so she only slept a wink, and the morning finds her hungry, thirsty, and seriously cranky.

The dead still cluster below. They’re not as centered on the lamp anymore, but the fuckers apparently decided to  _settle_  in this godforsaken town. She doesn’t even know where she is. Somewhere south of Los Angeles. She took her bike and got the hell out of the overpopulated city weeks ago, as soon as it became clear the military had lost the thread. Great lot of good their quarantines and martial law did. Biggest military in the world, and the Americans can’t even keep the walking dead at bay.

She bets Australia somehow weathered all this crock out. The thought makes her laugh. Scattered population means effective quarantines. Reasonable but not restrictive gun control means a chance at survival. Paranoically tight border control finally comes in handy too. Plus the fact that it’s as far away from the rest of the world as you can possibly get. It’s actually the reason she left. Irony’s a bitch.

Her stomach grumbles, and she kicks her feet to distract herself. The groans of the dead rise from below her, and she studies their patterns. She sighs; she’ll have to wait them out. If she had a weapon, she might’ve risked sliding down the pole and fighting her way to a building. She’s spent hours squinting at the ground trying to find her knife, but it’s too far down; either that or she needs contacts. She snorts. Good luck finding those in a zombie apocalypse.

She licks her lips. Her mouth’s like the bottom of a cocky’s cag. She’s used to heat from growing up in Perth, but there’s no escape to shade up here, and the sun shines down on her relentlessly. The bridge of her nose is already tight and blistered.

She sighs heavily. Worse than the hunger, worse than the thirst, is the bloody  _boredom._ She dangles her feet and studies the walkers below. She picks at the screws on the lamp and twirls the handcuffs around her finger. She slides down the pole and climbs up again once she’s halfway down, just to have something to do. And still it doesn’t fill enough hours in the day. She’s like a shag on a rock, and bored on top of it.

It’s around noon when she reaches her limit, and the giggles hit.

She lost a few people the last few months. Mostly acquaintances, forced allies, but in the beginning, there were a few she honestly cared for. Sadly, involuntary goodbyes are nothing new to her, and though it doesn’t take away from how shitty they are, she found a coping mechanism a long time ago.

Laughter and singing.

 _Loud_  singing.

Apparently, it doesn’t just activate after loss; boredom and the desperation of survival bring it up just as strongly.

“ _When I was young, I never needed anyone,”_ she murmurs, starting low and dramatically. “ _And making love was just for fun._ ” She clutches at her jacket and pulls it tight around her. “ _Those days are gone._ ”

She sings the second verse, building it up like she’s got a live audience hanging on her every word. The walkers mass below, the only audience she has, but she’ll take it. She takes a deep breath, takes in the view around her, and nearly cracks up.

“ _All by myself!”_ she sings at the top of her lungs, kicking her feet in the rhythm and putting her soul into the song. “ _Don’t wanna be, all by myself! Anymo-oooore!”_  The laughter aching for release makes her forget the next part, so she just goes for the chorus again – the best part, obviously. “ _All by myself!”_ she sings again, groaning with passion and voice breaking with laughter. “ _Don’t wanna be – ”_

“Hello?”

Elyza starts in surprise and topples backwards off the lamp.

“Jesus Christ!” she yells. Her knees hook on the lamp, but only barely, and she scrambles for a hold on the glass as her legs start to slip. The ground stretches out nearly a hundred feet below her – she’ll be damned if  _that’s_ how she dies.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit!” She finds a grip, holds tight, and clutches the lamp with all fours like an idiot as her breathing steadies.

“I’m sorry!” the voice says. Elyza looks around below in confusion, but sees no one. Is she hallucinating already? It’s only been a day of sleep deprivation, hunger, and thirst. She thought she was tougher than that.

“Over here!”

She looks around, and her eyes rise to one of the rooftops of the buildings. She quirks her head to flip the image, but she’s not seeing things. There’s a girl on the rooftop, waving enthusiastically.

“Hi!” the girl shouts, laughing. She tilts her head and raises an eyebrow. “What are you doing up there?”

Elyza snorts in amusement, tightens her hold on the lamp as she dangles like a sloth, and shrugs. “Oh, you know… just hanging out.”

The girl snorts with laughter, and Elyza smiles. She can’t be more than a year younger than she is, yet she’s unarmed and alone. Despite the fact that she’s in the same situation at the moment, Elyza doesn’t know which of that surprises her more.

Also, she’s cute as hell. In a zombie apocalypse, definitely not a commodity.

She climbs upright onto the lamp. “How about you?”

The girl approaches the ledge of the building and shrugs. “Got separated from my group before the walkers showed up. I’ve been holed up here for a day or so.”

“You weren’t with the Hells Angels wannabe’s, were you?”

The girl raises her eyebrows. “Who?”

Elyza smiles. “Good.”

The girl looks over the edge of the roof, taking in the walkers trudging between the buildings. “Got any ideas about getting out of here?”

She’s had a few, but most involved punching and kicking her way through the few hundred zombies still filling the streets below. Not the most hopeful or tactical plan. Maybe this girl can give her a different way. Create a distraction somewhere, draw them away, and circle back.

“How are you against the walkers?” she asks.

The girl hefts her backpack awkwardly. “Not great. I would’ve fought my way out otherwise.”

“Alright,” she says. Plan A off the table. “Got any weapons?”

“No. Same thing. Sorry.”

There goes Plan B. It relied heavily on catch-and-throwing skill anyway – not her forte. She’s much better at hand-to-hand.

“How about something to make a rope? Sheets, towels, the like?”

The girl nods excitedly. “Yeah, there’s some of those down below.”

“Good on ya!” she says, smiling. The girl laughs.

“You’re not from around here, are you?”

“What gave me away? Don’t tell me I’ve got an accent?” she asks, putting on an affronted look.

The girl smiles wider and shakes her head. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

“No worries, cutie.” She spreads her hands across her kingdom. “I’m not going anywhere.”

The girl grins, and it’s such an unexpectedly warming sight that Elyza’s heart shoots into her throat so fast she nearly loses her balance on the lamp.

Bugger.

Priorities, Elyza. Life over girls. Keep the hell up.

She smiles wider.

Right. That’ll probably go as well as ‘life over motorcycles’…

* * *

 

 

Alright. She’s not one hundred percent sure about this plan. Usually she’s happy to put on a brave face in front of the cutie, but dangling on a homemade rope above a crowd of undead goes a step too far just to impress a girl.

Sadly, it’s the only plan either of them has got.

“Are you sure about this?” the girl asks from the second story window of her building as she tightens the knot of the makeshift rope on the sturdy headboard of the four-poster bed. Elyza does the same on the lamp. The rope, comprised of a dozen sheets and towels knotted together, dangles the thirty feet between the two anchors. It offers Elyza a way off the lamp and to much more agreeable accommodations and company – if she survives the trip.

“Apples, she’ll be,” she says, zipping up her jacket and sliding to the edge of the lamp. “I’ve got a fair go.”

The girl’s eyebrows contract in confusion. “Sorry?”

She snorts. Americans. “I’ll be fine,” she simplifies. She grabs hold of the rope and tugs as hard as she can. The bed across the street doesn’t budge.

Alright, then. Guess there’s nothing to do but go for it.

“Wish me luck,” she says with a grin.

The girl looks on worriedly, but nods. “Good luck.”

She slides down the lamp, grabs the rope, and hooks her legs around it. It sags under her weight, but stays in place. So far, so good.

“Hey cutie,” she calls suddenly. The girl looks up in surprise. “I get up shit creek, you run, alright?” She cracks a cocky grin and winks at her. “It’ll be nice knowing I saved a damsel in distress from getting eaten _by_ getting eaten – and I’m not talking about in the good way.”

The girl’s worried expression smoothes with a smile, and Elyza feels suddenly much lighter – which, good thing, because she's relying heavily on the ability of the rope to take her weight.

First the vertical climb, now this, she thinks as she starts to shimmy across the rope. She’s had quite enough of climbing to last a lifetime. She’ll stick to biking, if she has any say in it.

Thirty feet is nothing compared to the distance stretched below her, but it takes her a lot longer than she expects. The zombies grunt and moan down below. She looks at them as she climbs on. The rope gradually sags as the gets to the middle, bringing her closer to the horde. A pair of eyes swivels up, and the groans increase in volume as more follow her movement and they cluster under her as though she were back on the lamp. She looks across the way, catching sight of the open window and the cutie’s worried frown as she watches her progress.

Keep it up, Elyza, she thinks with a subtle smirk. Save yourself and impress the girl at the same time. Who says you can’t get lucky in a zombie apocalypse?

Suddenly, the rope sags with a jolt, and she cries out in surprise as she drops four feet down. She looks up and sees the heavy four-poster bed jolt with her weight and slide toward the window; the girl rushes to hold it back, and Elyza’s heart jumps into her throat.

“No!” she shouts. “Stay back!”

The girl follows her command instantly, jumping back as the rope sags again and drags the bed against the open window with a crash – a crash that would’ve crushed her under the force of it. Elyza cries out, holding on for dear life as she drops towards the walkers’ outstretched arms. The rope slips from between her legs, and she swings dangerously at the nadir of the rope’s arc.

“Watch out!” the girl cries from the window.

Elyza looks below her, eyes wide. The reaching hands graze across her kicking feet, and she pulls them up with a grunt she feels in her aching ribs. “I’m alright!” she shouts, breathing fast and holding tight with two hands.

“No! The rope!”

Her eyes shoot up. Ten feet ahead, a knot begins to slip.

Oh shit.

She swings her feet up hard, groaning in pain, and scrambles forward as fast as she can, eyes trained on the fraying knot. The headboard creaks and the zombies moan, and she climbs faster.

Just a little further.

The knot stretches and quivers as it shifts.

Almost there.

One hand clamps on the sheet just as the corner of it slips from the knot and the rope snaps in two. Gravity takes over with a brutality that rivals that of the crowd of zombies groaning for her flesh below her, and she smashes against the side of the building with a grunt of pain. Somehow, she holds on one-handed to the sheet, and her boot connects with a zombie’s face below her as she swings along the wall.

Among all the excited moaning as the zombies amass beneath her half a story below, her ears still pick up the final, sobering sound of the headboard snapping under her full weight.

“Are you kidding me!?” she yells – and then she’s falling.

She lands heavily on the sidewalk and sags to her knees, but her irritation at the world quickly overpowers the pain in her feet and kneecaps. The whole point of this plan was to _avoid_  getting stuck in a herd of zombies unarmed. So much for that.

Her fist shoots out without preamble, knocking the first zombie away. She kicks forward at the next, throwing it back into its fellows, and rushes into the space it created. She keeps her back to the wall and fights as hard as she can. She knows the dead don’t feel pain, but her attacks are hard enough to push them back, and that’s all she needs for now. Her fists collide with decaying flesh with sickening squelches. Her knees break rotting ribs. Her elbows dislocate jaw after jaw as they snap at her. And her heart beats a rhythm that her attacks follow as though she’s timing it.

She’s been here before. Only this time, she’s on even ground with the dead, and it’s life versus death at its absolute finest.

She smirks at the thought, and throws another ending punch.

There’s an opening, and she takes it without hesitation. She creates another one with a vicious series of attacks, and takes that as well. She’ll fight her way out of this. She always does.

Suddenly, a scream breaks the repetitive sound of flesh on rotting flesh, and Elyza’s blood runs cold.

Fuck. The cutie.

She groans; she doesn’t even know her name.

She ducks under a manically snapping mouth, shoulders the next out of the way, throws a punch, and sprints out of the crowd towards the scream – just as she hears it again.

“No, no, no, no!” she groans, running through the alleyway as fast as her legs can take her. She smashes a zombie out of the way, jumps onto a dumpster, and hops the fence blocking her path in a fluid motion. She turns the corner of the building and stops short at the dead end – as well as what greets her. Two zombies advance on the girl that saved her life as she retreats from them, unarmed, eyes wide in fear, and soon to be as dead as her attackers.

Elyza’s blood boils, and she dashes forward with a feral scream. One of the zombies turns in confusion to the sound. She punches her fist against its throat, knocking it to the ground, and smashes its brains to the concrete with a well-aimed thud of her combat boot as she sprints over it. The other zombie still advances on the girl, arms stretched out and hands tangling in her brown hair as she struggles against it. The rotting lips close in, the girl whimpers, and Elyza doesn’t hesitate: she slides into a hard tackle that scrapes open her knees across the pavement but breaks the zombie’s shins all the same. It drops to the ground, and she follows up her tackle with an elbow to its rotting face.

Its groan cuts off with satisfying finality.

She breathes hard from the ground, elbow still buried in messy flesh and sticky brains. She extracts it with a sound of disgust. She’ll definitely need a serious washing after all of this.

“Oh my god.”

She looks up, taking in the cutie’s amazed and slightly queasy expression.

“Are you alright?” she asks, panting with exertion.

The girl nods quickly, eyes still wide.

She sighs in relief and gets slowly to her feet, flicking bits off flesh off her clothing. Her breath is still uneven and heart is beating in her throat, but the cutie is safe. That’s something.

“I can’t believe you fought your way through that,” she girl says, shaking her head.

Elyza smirks and flips her hair – she’s fairly sure there’s some brains stuck in it, but honestly, that probably only adds to the effect. “I’ve had worse. Though being handcuffed to a pole while a horde of zombies attacked takes the cake.” She throws the girl a cocky grin as her eyes shoot open even wider. “I would’ve carked it without you though,” she adds, smirking.

The girl grins. “I’m guessing that means kicked the bucket?”

She laughs. “Yeah.” She wipes her bloody hand on her pants and sticks it out. “I’m Elyza.”

The girl takes it and smiles. “Alicia.”

Elyza takes her in. Yeah, her initial assessment was definitely accurate.

“Have we met before, cutie?” she asks with a dazzling smile.

Alicia smiles in surprise as she picks up on the flirt, and she shakes her head – but doesn’t withdraw her hand. “I would’ve remembered.”

Elyza’s smile widens. Her eyes drop absently to the zombie at their feet – and she does a double take.

“No way,” she says, laughing and dropping to her knees.

“What? You know him?” Alicia asks.

Elyza cracks a grin as she takes in the tattered leather jacket, double-barrel shotgun over his back, and overgrown beard around the smashed face. “We’ve met,” she says cryptically. Alicia raises an eyebrow, but she doesn’t elaborate. She takes the shotgun and slings it over her shoulder, and then, heart beating with hope, digs into a pocket of the dead guy’s jacket. She nearly sags with relief when she finds her prize.

“Oh, baby, baby,” she murmurs, pressing the motorcycle keys to her chest.

“What?” Alicia asks.

She rises to her feet and twirls the keys around her finger.

“Need a ride, cutie?”

**Author's Note:**

> I am absolutely loving the way the 100’s fandom is dealing with this injustice, and I decided to join the madness. This was a lot of fun to write. It would be even more fun to get comments about it.


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